“Are you here, dead mom?” senior Jasmine Chen sang. To start out the evening, she belted out the lyrics of the song “Dead Mom” from the movie “Beetlejuice” in an impromptu karaoke. Technical difficulties—more so a Fine Lines coffeehouse tradition than even the off-pitch “Let It Go” singalongs—meant the audience needed distraction. “I try to make sure that [the audience is] always busy doing something, whether that’s helping set up while we figure something out, or listening to me do a wacky impression or tell stories,” she said. “There’s always something that they can react to.”
Having never been trained in voice, Chen wobbled and missed a few notes, but her mistakes made it all the funnier. “You guys didn’t hear that,” she laughed with the audience after making a slip. This opening act perfectly captured the “spontaneity” that Chen says is the secret ingredient to the club’s close-knit, vibrant atmosphere.
The April 4 spring coffeehouse was Chen’s fifth and final event she led as editor-in-chief of the Fine Lines club. Despite only joining the club as a publicity editor in her junior year, she’s managed to leave a huge legacy regardless. Her laughter and banter with the audience fosters an intimate environment that’s hard to replicate. “Just call out,” she’ll often yell to the crowd. “I think to myself,” junior Evyia Makrodmitri said, “If, in the future, I become part of one of the editors-in-chief of Fine Lines, how am I ever going to match Jasmine’s level of being able to freely talk in front of an audience?” Makrodmitri has presented her artwork at every single coffeehouse since her freshman year.
Throughout the night’s performances, Chen stood on a pedestal in a commanding black dress that glowed in the fluorescent turquoise of the string lights on the chorus room wall. To the small gathering of about fifteen—most of whom are regular coffeehouse attendees—she wasn’t a nameless host; rather, a familiar friend. After two years in the club, she uses first names when calling performers up or talking with the crowd.
“And next…Evyia!” Chen called out. After resolving the issues with the smartboard, Chen introduced Makrodmitri as the first performer. Makrodmtiri has an unrelenting passion for the great Slavic authors—her oeuvre includes countless pieces based on works by Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Prus. This coffeehouse, her ninth, Makrodmitri presented two new Dostoyevsky-inspired works: An artwork and some new footage to an animation she’s been working on. The drawing is based on a quote from “The Idiot” and prose from a scene description she says she found riveting. The animation is based on symbols in “The Brothers Karamazov,” and is set to the thematically related song, “Laplace’s Angel” by Will Wood.
Unfortunately, as a junior nearing exam season in the IB program at RM, Makrodmitri produced less art than usual. “Whenever I want to stay in a creative state of mind, it’s really hard to stay there because I feel the pressure of time ticking and I worry about getting more assignments done, and the flow of assignments is endless,” she said. “However, I still find enjoyment in art and find it a pretty good coping mechanism for the stress.”
When Makrodmitri bemoaned her lowered creativity, Chen poked fun. “Evyia, I wish I had your art block,” she grabbed a mic to interrupt. “Guys, the amount of art she’s able to produce is absolutely mind-blowing.” While she only created twenty new seconds, Makrodmitri’s animation averages 11 frames per second. This means that in the seven weeks elapsed since the last coffeehouse, she produced an astounding 220 separate drawings. Afterwards, she laughed at Chen’s intervention. “I think that even though I put my phase of lower productivity in the category of ‘artistic burnout,’ it’s not actually artistic burnout because it’s more so the state of delayed gratification,” she said. “I’m still being productive. I’m just not seeing the results until later.”
Outside of performances, Makrodmitri’s magazine submissions have brought Fine Lines much recognition; last year, she won the Columbia Scholastic Press Association’s Gold Circle, which recognizes individual achievement. “Evyia is very talented and very sweet, and I could praise her up to the moon,” Chen said. “I wish I could push her art on a billboard.” Chen’s admiration is reciprocated. “I’ve really appreciated Jasmine’s motivation to keep Fine Lines going,” Makrodmitri said. “Fine Lines has been a place where I can share a lot of my artwork and feel proud of myself for sharing artwork, and also a place where I’ve met a lot of new people.”
The next performer was sophomore Cynthia Li who played “If I Am With You” by Yoshimasa Terui on the piano. Senior Ginger Speer, a close friend of Chen, continued with a piano arrangement of “Boys Don’t Cry” by The Cure. Lastly, junior Auden Shoemaker performed an untitled piano sonata that was self-composed.
Then, to much applause, came the intermission. Students got up to chat and snack on the chips, cookies and, of course, coffee, on the table outside. Mingling in the crowd were some of Chen’s art friends at nearby high schools who drove to RM to celebrate her Fine Lines career. After the break, Chen took advantage of the small audience to deviate from the typical coffeehouse structure. Instead of the usual continued performances scattered with impromptu karaokes, she prepared three games: Musical chairs, trivia and Simon says.
First was musical chairs. The participants wrestled each other for the prize, a homemade knitted rabbit. Chen chose music from a playlist she had made that included meme songs like “Never Gonna Give You Up” and also songs that referenced inside jokes with her friends. Next was trivia. Chen went through a slideshow of literary and art trivia (“What is Shakespeare’s longest play?” “Hamlet”) and awarded the fastest answers with points. At the end, the player with the most points won a giant homemade brownie baked by editor-in-chief and junior Ansuya Bisbey. Last was a game of Simon says. Chen shouted commands, but after 15 minutes, when five people still remained, editor-in-chief and junior Selena Li stepped in. Li rapidly spit out orders requiring tricky twists and bends, and as people were quickly eliminated, only two players remained. One was senior Kalel Bonilla. Throughout the entire game, he kept turning to smile at and laugh with his girlfriend, senior Hildana Anteneh, who was cheering him on in the audience. Then Li called out: “Simon says spin in a circle!” Suddenly, the other player stumbled, and Bonilla was the last one standing. At the end of the evening, when he was presented with a knitted duck during the awards ceremony, he ran over to Ateneh, hugged her, and gifted it.
As the coffeehouse ended and people began cleaning up, Makrodmitri said that thanks to Chen, her confidence level that night was higher. “During the presentation, each time, I hope I can make it more fun than I did last time. I think Jasmine really helped with this. We made jokes in front of the audience,” she said. “Jasmine has contagious confidence.”
Chen completely disagreed. “I was sweating buckets the entire time. People think that when you’re nervous, you have to sound or act nervous, but you don’t really have to do that,” she said. “To be honest, I overthink a lot of things, but I think despite that, I want the other people performing to feel like they are confident. Because they should be confident… They have this joy for it that’s infectious. I want them to share that with the world.”
As Chen has now graduated, she’s relinquished her role as editor-in-chief and won’t be hosting again. “I’m freaking sad that I can’t do this again… I think more than that though, I’m really happy that I was able to do my last coffeehouse, and that people showed up,” she said. “I think that’s the more important part.” However, she does plan to attend the year-end summer coffeehouse. “If I get invited, which I hope I will,” she laughed. “If I don’t show up, just assume I got shot in an alleyway or something.”
Senior Jasmine Chen gifts senior Ginger Speer, the winner of musical chairs, with a knitted rabbit at the ending awards ceremony. (Ian Chen)Art has been part of Chen’s life ever since she was young, and she says her earliest memory is of her drawing. “I’ve always loved the idea that I could create anything I want and it would exist… I’m able to show what I can imagine to other people,” she said. “I think that’s an ability that not a lot of people want to harness nowadays, which I think is a shame. I hope more people will do that.” Today, she’s been doing graphic design for two years and has certifications in Photoshop and Adobe. She also takes a portfolio-building class at the Visual Art Center Program at Einstein High School.
Her junior year as publicity editor was when Chen attended her first ever coffeehouse. She says looking back on that evening still inspires her today. “I remember the EICs were doing karaoke, and they were singing Mariah Carey,” she said. “I remember thinking, wow, I really like this energy where you can just sing and do whatever and be confident, and everyone was laughing and nothing was serious. And I really, really wanted to try and replicate that with my own coffeehouses.”
Now that she’s graduated from high school, art will remain a huge part of her life. In the fall, Chen will be attending the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. She plans to major in illustration, but will also enroll in a five year program where she’ll graduate with an art education degree as well. “I hope eventually I’ll be able to continue teaching other kids to enjoy art and pursue that type of passion,” she said. “I’ve always really loved seeing people try new things and realize they love creating.”
Likewise, Chen encourages all emerging RM artists to suppress their anxiety and participate in the many showcasing opportunities Fine Lines offers. She says a great first step is submitting to the magazine (the submission form can be found on their Linktree). “This place does not judge you based on any type of skill level. We judge you on your ability to try and your ability to improve,” she said. “Even though we do have a review process for our art, it doesn’t say anything about your skill level. We have a certain amount of pages that we are able to print because of the fact that we have a certain amount of funding.”
For in-person performances like the coffeehouses or RM Idol, Chen tells artists to not be afraid of making mistakes. “I know for a fact that most of the people performing today made a mistake. But the fact of the matter is, when people walk away from this performance, they’re not gonna be like, ‘Oh, they made a mistake on the first key,’” she said. “The important part of the performance is that they played the song, or they did the show, or they showed their art, and people are gonna think about that instead.”
This lesson, Chen says, is the most important one she’s learned from Fine Lines. “I think if you spend that time worrying about all the things you did wrong or all the things you could be doing wrong, you’re no longer enjoying the event. The point is to have fun. The point is to put yourself out there,” she said. “Fine Lines with all of these events—fundraising for money, reaching out to people, engaging with people and emceeing—has really allowed me to feel more confident trying new things, and realize that nothing is that serious.”
